The “show-cause” hearing date involving more than a dozen attorneys in the controversial class-action “forum shopping” case has been moved up a day to Feb. 18.
U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes agreed last week to make that change after Lyn Pruitt of Little Rock, who is an attorney for the defendant, USAA, requested the change.
She said in her letter to Holmes that she is director-elect of the International Association of Defense Counsel Trial Academy and must be in California on Feb. 19 to train the academy’s faculty for their roles in teaching younger lawyers trial skills.
“If there is any way I could move this IADC obligation, I would do so because this hearing is very important to me,” Pruitt wrote. “I just have no flexibility to do so since this is set by the IADC and has been in place to coincide with the group’s mid-year meeting.”
Pruitt and plaintiffs’ attorneys John Goodson of Texarkana, W.H. Taylor of Fayetteville and others involved in a class-action suit against the USAA insurance company have been ordered to explain why Holmes shouldn’t sanction them for abusing the federal court system.
By dismissing a case from Holmes’ court after 17 months only to refile it the next day for settlement in Polk County Circuit Court, the attorneys appeared to be trying “to evade the federally-mandated review of the class and the proposed settlement by this Court in particular,” Holmes concluded.
Meanwhile …
Attorneys for Goodson, Taylor and more than 10 other of the plaintiffs’ attorneys filed their response to the order to show cause Thursday afternoon as Whispers was going to press.
In the 48-page filing, with hundreds of pages of exhibits, the attorneys for plaintiffs’ counsel said that they acted in good faith and their actions during the handling of the class-action case were appropriate. Their conduct also doesn’t warrant “the harsh imposition of sanctions,” according to the filing by attorneys James Moody of Little Rock and John Elrod of Fayetteville.
In addition to defending their actions, the plaintiffs’ attorneys complained about the Arkansas Business story that brought the refiled case to Holmes’ attention.
In addition to “numerous” unspecified “inaccuracies,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys attacked a source quoted in the article, Ted Frank of the Center for Class Action Fairness in Washington.
Arkansas Business should have reported, they told Holmes, that Frank has been paid consulting fees for working for parties who have objected to several proposed class-action settlements.
Consider it done, although being paid by clients is not unusual among people interviewed by Arkansas Business.
Sign up for Daily E-news
